THE MEETING IN LJUBLJANA, MAY 2012
The next EGPRN meeting will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia from 10 to 13 May 2012 in the ‘Domus Medica,’ the ‘home’ of all medical organizations of Slovenia. The title of this seventy-fourth meeting will be ‘Quality improvement in the care of chronic disease in family practice: The contribution of education and research.’
Our profession is under constant internal and external revision. We are facing many challenges in the development of structured clinical approaches, practice organization and the role of team members. The constant aiming for improvement of our work has provoked a vast amount of research aimed to develop methods, tools and outcomes of quality in structured care for patients with a chronic disease. Patient centeredness and shared decision-making need to be in balance with quality indicators and the paradigm of quality improvement.
On Thursday 10 May, a pre-conference workshop entitled ‘Vocational education and training in quality improvement’ will be led by representatives from three organizations: EGPRN, EURACT (Academy of Teachers in General Practice/Family Medicine) and Equip (European Association for quality in General Practice/Family Medicine). In the first part of the workshop—after presentation of the results of a survey on existing training programmes and emphasizing the part in which teaching is focusing on quality improvement—the leaders will present teaching and assessment methods, starting with needs assessment. The participants will discuss their learning needs, prepare their personal learning plan and get feedback from the faculty. The second part of the workshop will focus on assessment of Quality improvement learning. Participants will have an opportunity for discussion about available and potential new assessment tools for assessing teaching in quality improvement. In the last part, the research agenda for quality improvement projects will be discussed. Ideas for the potential research projects on teaching and assessment of quality are welcome.
Another workshop entitled ‘Quality improvement in the care of chronic disease in family practice: the contribution of education and research’ will be organized by participants and researchers from all over Europe involved in research using electronic patient records in family medicine, including invitees from the EU project TRANSFoRm (FP7 247787, http://www.transformproject.eu). The format will include a series of invited presentations structured as a 15-min oral presentation followed by 15 min discussion.
The EGPRN meeting in Ljubljana will also offer an opportunity for people involved in various international collaborative projects, like ‘Womanpower’ and ‘Depression and multi-morbidity,’ to have their meetings. Another special feature of this meeting will be the extended Council meeting, where the future development of EGPRN will be discussed.
It is a tradition of EGPRN meetings that participants are invited to visit local practices, where they can get an idea of the national health care system and care for patients. The EGPRN meeting is also a place of friendly contacts and informal discussions on various matters, a place where future collaboration can start or a place to enjoy the company of each other. The organizers of Ljubljana meeting kindly invite you to visit the EGPRN meeting in Slovenia.